


The Better Part of Valor

by orphan_account



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 06:19:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5698156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War does not determine who is right - only who is left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Better Part of Valor

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently I once wrote a lot of weird Naruto fic? This is one of the earliest, cleaned up and expanded a little.

“But you are together,” Lee said.

“No we’re not,” Iruka corrected, resisting the urge to throw something, because it wasn’t Lee’s fault he didn’t understand that just because you let a guy fuck you two or three or six times a week, it didn’t mean you wanted other people giving pairs of tickets to a local onsen.

Lee’s eyebrows knitted together anxiously.

“Are you having a … a lover’s quarrel?”

“What -  _ no _ ,” Iruka said, alarmed. “No no no no no. We’re not - lovers, remember? So we can’t have those.”

He looked around the mission room furtively, but it was long past regular hours, the sunset lush like the heart of a peach as it sank underneath the hills beyond Konoha’s gates. Aside from the lazy whir of the overhead fan and Iruka’s own rapidly accelerating pulse rate, the room was quiet. Deserted. Supposedly.

Iruka turned back to Lee.

“Look,” he sighed. “I appreciate your … thoughtfulness, but Kakashi and I don’t have that kind of relationship. So!” He flashed Lee a weak smile. “You should give it to a real couple. One who can actually enjoy that kind of thing.”

“A real couple,” Lee repeated, still holding out the proffered tickets. “You would not consider your and Kakashi-sensei’s relationship to be characterized by tender affection or - or deep emotional and spiritual fulfillment?”

The Academy really needed to revise its graduation standards, Iruka reflected glumly. “That’s correct,” he said, careful, because the Maito Gai speech on premarital sex obviously hadn’t covered what Lee accidentally witnessed in the alley behind Ichiraku. “I have the highest respect for Hatake Kakashi as a shinobi of Konoha. But I don’t, um, regard him in that way.”

The look on Lee’s face twitched in dawning comprehension.

“You know,” Iruka pressed. “The tender feelings part.”

“Yes,” Lee intoned.

“I mean, I haven’t even been on a real date in six months, so there’s no way-”

“It’s quite all right!” Lee interrupted, and even hiding behind seven geologic layers of paperwork, Iruka could still feel the well-meaning earnestness of those words. It was upsetting. “Very well then, I shall not trouble you further sensei. But know that you have a stalwart and sympathetic confidante in me, should you ever need the support of a fellow ninja!”

“Sure,” Iruka said weakly. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Actually, it had been seven months since he went on a date.

Sora-san had wide, wine-dark eyes and an easy laugh that he’d pressed into Iruka’s skin when he showed up with flowers. They’d held hands, walking aimlessly around a koi pond for hours just talking, and Iruka never heard from him again because Anko had the audacity to be good at diplomacy instead of freaky snake jutsu, and opened peace negotiations with Hidden Mist, thereby doubling the workload of every chuunin and quadrupling sales of bottom-shelf sake in Konoha.

Kakashi’s eye - the non-Obito one - was dark and he laughed easily, too. Iruka tried not think about that, much.

 

* * *

 

If being a shinobi was a lot of hurry up and wait, diplomacy was like trying to put out a never-ending stream of small fires while your house burned down behind you. Missives arrived hourly from Hidden Mist and left with even more alarming frequency, crammed with sniping about patrol boundaries, trade rights, what to do with prisoners of war. Iruka tried not to feel angry about it - that after so many years of violence and suffering, after losing so many and so much, this was what the aftermath came down to: a couple miles along the western border between Fire and Water Country, and appropriate taxation of sweet potatoes.

“Learn to love it,” Genma said when Iruka complained. “Maybe if Godaime sees you suffering enough, you’ll even get a promotion.”

Iruka rolled his eyes and bit into his third stick of seasonally-inappropriate dango. Autumn was blundering into winter and it showed - in the shivers of his students who forgot their gloves, the faint dusting of frost on Genma’s shoulders, the stiff way Tsunade had moved her right arm during that morning’s debriefing with Iruka’s committee.

“And what's that like?” he asked, because Genma  _ had  _ gotten promoted recently. “Oh great General jounin-sama?”

“That’s classified,” Genma scowled, and then, before Iruka could pout, twisted his face into a sly smile and stage-whispered, “So, tell me all about this torrid secret love affair you’re having with Hatake Kakashi.”

Iruka choked. Next to him, three newly-minted chuunin fell off their bar stools, which answered his question of whether they had been eavesdropping this whole time. 

“Where did you hear that?” he asked, setting down his dango stick carefully.

Genma gave a horrible, horrible wink and lifted his eyebrows like a stage curtain, which meant -

“Gai?”

“Actually, Kurenai,” Genma admitted. “But she heard it from Izumo, who heard it from Gai and his protege, which means your cat’s out of the bag, Umino.”

Iruka covered his face. "There is no torrid secret love affair."

At least not the secret part anymore, he reflected, based on how the new chuunins had given up feigning ignorance and were now blatantly listening in. That was the problem with living in a ninja village - a pound of gossip was worth far more than a pound of gold when it came to getting people's attention. If Iruka was a betting man, he'd put his money on every leaf nin knowing about this by tomorrow.

Genma patted his shoulder sympathetically. "It's okay, we've all been there."

"What, considered becoming missing nin to escape the shame of your sex life going public?" Iruka asked dryly.

Genma rolled his eyes. "So dramatic, sensei." And then, in a lower voice - "You know, in all seriousness, I'd hate to see my comrades sad and lonely because of their own denial and communication issues."

Iruka stared. "Kakashi's doing fine."

"Oh yeah, that’s the guy I was talking about."

Really, Iruka thought as he walked back to his apartment later, what the hell.

He resolved to put it out of his mind, but the issue floated alongside him all through his shower, curled like a particularly irritating cat at the corners of Iruka's conscience while he brushed his teeth and crept into bed to reread Naruto's latest letter for the third time. The brat was leading efforts to rebuild border villages damaged by the war, and while Iruka's heart swelled with pride and amazement to think of Naruto being responsible for  _ anything _ , he couldn't help but think, rarely and selfishly, that Naruto should've started with Konoha.

But the new gravestones still looked too fresh and unweathered, everyone was still furious with Sasuke for leaving on what Sakura called "a journey to find inner peace, or some bullshit like that", and Iruka had to admit there was merit in trying to distance yourself from grief like that through distraction. So he was still pondering the conversation with Genma when he went to relieve the graveyard shift at mission desk the next morning, clutching a thermos of tea in one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other.

Kakashi looked up from his book and waved. "Yo, Iruka-sensei."

Iruka squinted, and then set his thermos down in defeat. "You're back."

"That I am." Kakashi always moved like he was missing a couple vertebrae; this time, he drooped forward from his position against a column. "And I just heard the most amazing rumor from Gai."

Iruka jabbed a finger at him. "That's your fault, you know. I told you to save it until we got back to my apartment. Now Lee-san is giving me pairs of tickets to the onsen."

Kakashi's eye widened innocently. "Forgive me, sensei, I was too overcome with the passion and springtime of my youth."

"Get your springtime the hell away from me," Iruka warned. He sighed. "Anyway, since you're here, we should probably figure out what to do about this."

Kakashi's posture became aggressively disinterested in a way that shouted trouble.

"Is this the part where you tell me that we shouldn't see each other anymore?"

"What? No."

Kakashi cocked his head. "Then are you suggesting we see other people?"

Iruka felt the thin veneer of his sanity crack and splinter off a little. "Everyone thinks that we have some SECRET TRAGIC romance that we're keeping hidden for REASONS," he snapped. "In what way would either of those suggestions make people STOP believing that?"

"Maa, it always seems to work so well in the novels," Kakashi said, a little sadly.

_ You can't deck a war hero _ , Iruka reminded himself. With Sasuke out of the village,  _ Konoha only has one working Sharingan _ .

"There's going to be an A-rank mission to Mist in four days," he said. "The Academy will be on break then, and Anko wants assistance with negotiations on the military outpost near Falling Water Pass. I think that if I go, it'll take around two weeks, and people will get bored of the rumors about us by then. Out of sight, out of mind."

"Ah," Kakashi said. He looked thoughtful. "That's very sneaky of you, Iruka-sensei."

Iruka flushed a little. "Do you have any objections?"

Kakashi gave him a heavy-lidded stare, one of the ones that reminded people he'd been  _ General Hatake _ during the war, a leader of Leaf's nin, Master of a Thousand Jutsu. Behind the mask, Iruka knew he was leering.

"None." And then Kakashi stepped forward, placing a sealed scroll on the mission desk. Iruka looked at it and opened his mouth to unleash a preemptive diatribe on record keeping and the importance of legible reports before he saw the address - TO: IRUKA-SENSEI DON'T READ THIS KAKASHI-SENSEI!! - in familiar, smudged, well-loved handwriting, and felt gratitude close over his throat like a fist.

"Ah, thanks-," he began, and looked up to see that Kakashi had disappeared; instead Iruka was staring a little dazedly at Inuzuka Kenshi, first in line and clutching her own scroll and looking deeply, deeply wronged.

"Oh my gods," she wailed. "You guys are even more disgusting than Genma told me."

 

* * *

 

For all his tendency to read scandalous novels in public and say things like "Sensei, would you like some help with your package?", Kakashi's inner pervert was surprisingly nonexistent. Iruka had, when they first started, expected it to be rough and dirty and slightly embarrassing. Mizuki had liked him that way and Iruka - Iruka was good at being sweet for someone like that. But Kakashi's desires seemed mostly limited to making Iruka come first and then lolling around his threadbare apartment, working on mission reports while consuming cups of searing hot tea that Iruka made by rote. He looked lean and handsome at those times, mask pulled down to his chin, dressed in old mission blacks with holes in the sleeves. 

"You can hit me," Iruka said. He winced when Kakashi's hands froze in the middle of undoing his own flak vest. Shit.

"I mean," Iruka fumbled, reddening and looking around the room, "Ropes, blindfolds, that kind of thing. If you want it, just let me know."

Kakashi made a soft humming noise that could mean any number of things.

It made Iruka feel all of fourteen again, lumbering and clueless and hyper-conscious of how Sarutobi Asuma's shoulders looked underneath his new jounin vest during the spring festival. Iruka stopped trying to tug his boots off and considered whether falling off the Third's statue on Hokage Mountain would cause enough brain damage to forget this moment. He jumped when Kakashi tapped his forehead.

"Sensei, you can't just say things like that to a man." Did Kakashi sound  _ fond _ ? Terribly fond. "It'll make them want to take advantage."

Iruka huffed. He thought Kakashi would've liked that - all his previous partners had at least been interested. But Kakashi just laughed and pulled him towards the bed, sat down on the edge and made Iruka straddle his lap. Kakashi laughed a lot during sex - another surprise. It made Iruka wonder if he was missing something important: not just the perverted side that Naruto had conditioned him to expect through many rants about  _ Icha Icha _ over the years, but Kakashi's history of catastrophic loss that was completely at odds with how he liked to lick the shell of Iruka's ear and touch the nape of his neck and palm the spread of his hips.

It was a bad habit, the worrying. Iruka had to remind himself that Kakashi was older than him and ten times stronger than almost anyone in the Hidden Villages and clearly capable of fending for himself.

"I think bondage is kind of hot," Iruka tried as Kakashi started moving down his chest. "Um. And - the whole control thing."

"Mm," said Kakashi, busy.

 

* * *

 

"How was Mist?" Kakashi asked later. He was rooting around the covers for his hitae-ite. There was a hickey on his chest, directly above a starburst of delicate scar tissue. Iruka stared at it and felt vaguely guilty.

"Frustrating," he settled on after a pause. "Their new Mizukage has been - difficult about Tsunade's absence at negotiations."

"That's to be expected."

Terumi Mei's voice had been elegant as a crane, and her ambition about as subtle as a kunai in the back. Even Anko, who was probably the world's foremost expert on power-hungry soft-spoken shinobi, looked visibly wound up by the relentless lines of questioning about Tsunade's health after a week. Iruka split his time between redirecting the conversation back to appropriate use of signaling flares and plying her with hot, terrible sake during breaks so Anko didn't start an international incident by pulling the Mizukage's perfectly coiffed hair.

Kakashi found his hitae-ite and scooped up his shirt from the floor. "Well, I'm off. Escort mission to Suna. Should be back in about a week."

"Travel safe," Iruka said. Escort mission his ass.

A faint, warm pressure brushed his nose and made him look up - Kakashi was tracing the curve of Iruka's left cheek with one gloved thumb. Sometime in the last few seconds, he'd gotten fully dressed. "I will be especially diligent and wary of my surroundings, sensei," Kakashi said, deadpan.

Definitely not worth worrying about, Iruka decided as he stomped into the Academy on Monday.

"Welcome back," Suzume called softly as Iruka passed by her classroom. She had two children clutching at her legs, dressed in identical yellow sweaters. She was also, inexplicably, covered in glitter. "Thank you," Suzume added when Iruka brought back a towel and dustpan.

"It's no problem," Iruka said. He reached out and snagged one of the boys off Suzume's legs - probably an Inuzuka, from the way he started gnawing lazily on his fist.

"Hikaru-kun!" Suzume admonished, having finished wiping most of the sparkles off her face. "I take my eyes away for one second and look what you've done to Iruka-sensei's sleeve!" She snatched the boy back and Iruka looked down at the arm he'd been using to hold Hikaru. The cuff was ragged and there was a small constellation of holes running up to the elbow.

"It's all right, he didn't do -" Iruka stopped. Felt mortification spread, hot and itchy, across his face. The shirt was too big.

"What?" Suzume asked distractedly. She wrinkled her nose, watching as the kids scampered off back into the classroom. "I give up. They just never stop surprising you, do they?"

"Yes," Iruka said, voice creaking. "That's. What I was thinking."

 

**Author's Note:**

> GUYS. Where is all the good Naruto fic? There are like 10 good ones on AO3 and dumpster diving on FF.net yielded no results. If you have recs, besides the obvious ones that get recced on every rec list ever, please let me know. Some stuff I've liked (but other pairings would be very, very welcome as well!):
> 
> \- All of pentapus's work (especially Recommended for Admission/Dinner with the Special Assassination and Tactical Squad)  
> \- All of rageprufrock's work  
> \- Monkkeyslut's Sasuke/Sakura fic. (I'm trash. Bite me. My thirteen-year-old self is still smugly satisfied that this happened.)  
> \- most of thehoyden's work  
> \- most of maldoror's Gaara/Lee fics (Forever on the hunt for more character development of these two though)
> 
> I will like, write you stuff in thanks. Or, uh, do something. With words. <3


End file.
